The Story Behind the Story

I've been thinking for a long time about starting a blog about my writing journey, but I haven't had the courage. Now an online class through my writing group has given me that courage, so here I go.

The 90,000-word novel that I am working on has a long life and a story of its own. The seed idea for it came to me in the 1950s. In the 1960s I created the main characters and jotted some notes about setting which can still be found in it today. In South America in 1975, I sat down and wrote five pages, single spaced, on a san-serif typewriter. It was Chapter 1, and all the rest back story. Horrors!

Ten years later, when it became clear we would not be continuing in South America, I brought those five pages home to Texas and by fall of 1987, I had the story completed. What has happened since then, especially in the last three years, is a drama all its own as I have learned better writing techniques and worked to bring the thing into the writing styles of this century. Stay tuned!